Kevin Colbert thinks analytics have their place. But the NFL leans on data instead of the eye test. As he’s mentioned before, Colbert appeared on the All Things Covered podcast to give his thoughts on the numbers-crunching world football has become.
“I know we live in an analytic, objective world right now, and that’s cool,” Colbert told hosts Bryant McFadden and Patrick Peterson. “I get it. But that’s kind of where things are going. And all due respect. I understand that. But you guys know this ’cause you played at that level, you’re not thinking about [analytics]. That ball’s snapped, you’re reacting.”
An old-school scout who grew up learning football in the 80s, Colbert’s approach is a departure from the modern-day world. Every team has analytics staff and some use data as much as anything to drive their draft picks and free agent additions. The Steelers have an analytics staff and had one under Colbert, but it was regarded as one of the league’s smaller groups that’s seen plenty of turnover.
While Colbert’s point of players not thinking about numbers is true in a vacuum, that again misses the point of analytics. It’s not data to measure what players are consciously thinking. It’s data to track their results. Some of it is informational. How fast a player runs and what that says about his potential NFL success. No player is consciously thinking about his 40 time. But it’s still a data point that says something. Other data could point to if a player is used in man or zone and where he has more success. Or a wide receiver and the route he wins most often on.
But Kevin Colbert focuses, as he’s done before, on the intangibles.
“Because that intangible of being a winning football player who loves the game. You can’t quantify that. That’s just something that we have to witness and take into account for. Because like I said, all the players you mentioned before, they all had that love of the game,” Colbert said, referring to a list of great Steelers the show rattled off.
The reality is both have a place. Anyone who is solely intangibles-driven or solely analytically driven won’t succeed and will miss more than they should. Colbert doesn’t seem to be completely against the numbers but doesn’t value them like the rest of the league was moving toward. Worse yet, he’s yet to show a public understanding of how that type of data can be useful to help a team gather information and evaluate.
The old scouting adage is to talk about what a player can do instead of what he can’t. When it comes to analytics, Colbert seems to focus on all the things analytics can’t do instead of what it offers an organization.
